Managing site licenses

Kentico requires a license key for every domain that your sites use. You cannot view or edit sites running on domains that do not have a matching license in the system. If you do not have a valid license for the current domain, only global applications are available in the administration interface.

To manage your system’s licenses, open the Licenses application in the Kentico administration interface.

Managing licenses in the system

When you obtain a license key (full or trial) for a domain:

  1. Click New license.
  2. Copy the full license key into the field.
  3. Click Save.

The Licenses page displays a list of all licenses added to your system, including the domain names, expiration dates and license editions.

A domain can only have one attached license. If you are replacing an expired license or upgrading the license to a higher version, you first need to delete the current license by clicking the delete button (). Deleting a license does not in any way affect the content or settings of the site running on the given domain.

License expiration

Most licenses have a specified expiration date, and become invalid midnight (0 hours) at the start of the given date. For example, if a license has an expiration date of December 31, the last day it remains functional is December 30.

Obtaining licenses

You can generate your license keys on the Kentico Client Portal.

On the Client Portal, you need to register your license (Serial Number) which we have sent you after you bought Kentico. You can then generate new license keys based on the registered license. If you cannot sign in to the Client Portal, please contact the person in your company who has the credentials and the license.

How licensing works

MVC site licensing

To learn how licensing works for sites built using the MVC development model, see: Kentico licensing for MVC applications

License keys support all protocol and www prefix combinations for the specified domain. Every valid license key also allows you to use the local server’s hostname (localhost and loopback IP addresses – 127.X.Y.Z).

For example, if you add a license key for the example.com domain, you can use all of the following domains:

  • http://example.com
  • https://example.com
  • http://www.example.com
  • https://www.example.com
  • http://localhost
  • http://127.X.Y.Z (where X, Y and Z are in the range 0–255)

If your site uses domain aliases (different domain names that point to the same website) or a Presentation URL with a different domain, you need to add extra license keys for these domains. You can generate the domain alias license keys on the Kentico Client Portal. Domain alias licenses are free of charge if you already own a license for the main domain.